Spiders

There are at least 50,000 spider species in the arachnid family. Spiders are defined as having eight jointed legs, no wings, no antennae and only two body sections: the thorax and the abdomen. Spiders spend their entire life span capturing and eating other insects (about 2,000 in a year). Even though spiders do a great deal of good for our environment, spiders are greatly feared by most of the population. Most spiders are killed only because they scare people, not because they are actually dangerous to humans.

All spiders have some amount of venom with varying degrees of potency. The fangs of a spider are hollow. The venom is injected through the fangs into the victim (usually an insect). The venom will rapidly paralyze the victim and aid in digestion. Fortunately, most spiders are not dangerous to humans because their fangs are either too short or too fragile to penetrate human skin.

Spiders do not attack in herds. Spiders do not lay in wait and attack people. Spiders do not lift the covers at night and crawl into bed to bite people as they are sleeping. Some spiders can jump but they are not intentionally jumping at humans to attack them. A spider generally bites a human because it was scared and bites to defend itself. Spiders generally prefer to live in undisturbed areas such as corners of the house or the eaves or in the garden where they can catch insects in peace.

Killing spiders with pesticides is difficult. Spraying surfaces is usually ineffective because the spider has minimal contact with the sprayed area. The actual spider or egg sacs must be sprayed with pesticide. The danger of a possible spider bite has to be weighed against the risk of over-using pesticides that probably will not work against spiders.

Bite marks from most spiders are usually too small to easily be seen. Frequently the patient will not recall being bitten. Many of the spider bites will result in pain, small puncture wounds, redness, itching and swelling that lasts a couple of days. Spiders rarely bite more than once, so multiple bites are usually caused by insects such as fleas, bedbugs, ticks, mites and biting flies.

Read Mores